Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.
Calling business accelerators "boring," Jumpstart Foundry leaders have transformed the startup organization into a seed stage health care innovation fund.
The new format will allow Jumpstart Foundry to invest in 20 early-stage companies in the next year, more than double its reach through the accelerator model. It also will expand the range of services available to participating early-stage companies, each receiving $150,000, $50,000 of which goes toward services.
The idea that you can make money and deliver a social benefit is hardly new, but David Musto brings new research that finds that social enterprises and their funding are sustainable, at least in their current form. And the timing couldn’t be better. Why? Because social enterprises are tapping capital markets for funding.
The following scenario is more plausible than ever: Say, a “doing well by doing good” type of firm, imagine a public version of Warby Parker, put itself up for sale. Let’s say the firm received one bid in which it was stipulated that the buyer would maintain the firm’s buy-one, giveaway-one model. Suppose another buyer came in at $10 more per share, but the higher bid was contingent on the social enterprise giving up its social component. Would a Warby be forced to take the higher bid?
General Electric will relocate its headquarters from Fairfield, Conn., to Boston as early as this summer, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt announced Wednesday.
GE first said it was considering moving last June after Connecticut proposed raising business taxes, but GE has finally decided to leave its Fairfield headquarters after over 30 years. "We want to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations,” Mr. Immelt wrote in a press release.
A caloric increase is helping the oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world — a giant tortoise — reclaim his health and vigor, a veterinarian reports.
At 183 years old, Jonathan, who resides on the tiny Atlantic island of St. Helena, is now eating like a king. Until recently, the giant tortoise munched on twigs, leaves and grass, an unhealthy diet for such a large and aging tortoise. But now, he's being served a more nutritious menu, including apples, carrots, cucumbers, bananas and guava, according to National Geographic.
Image: Veterinarian Dr. Joe Hollins feeds Jonathan on the lawn near the governor's house on Saint Helena. Credit: Copyright 2016 British Veterinary Association. All rights reserved.
I want to share with you what I have experienced from sitting on both sides of the table on how you increase your chances of raising capital for your business. One of the most frequent questions I get as a mentor to entrepreneurs is “How do I find the money to start my business?” I always answer that there isn’t any magic, and contrary to popular myth, nobody is waiting in the wings to throw money at you just because you have a new and exciting business idea.
BOSTON—Executives at Boston-based startup accelerator program MassChallenge had a role in luring General Electric Co. to Boston.
Scott Bailey, MassChallenge's managing director, said he met with officials of GE several weeks ago to tout the city's startup and innovation sector.
Bailey said the GE officials were excited about the young, up-and-coming talent pool, the amount of research and development work going on in Boston, and the overall innovation activity.
Image: Scott Bailey, managing director of MassChallenge. W. Marc Bernsau
Helping the U.S. to maintain world leadership in energy technology, the Deputy Director will serve as the senior career leader of a select, highly skilled team of professionals focused on identifying and moving new discoveries and innovations from the renowned Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, plants, and facilities into the market, enhancing U.S. competitiveness and technological leadership.
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Rewards for creative people; investments in new ideas that challenge the power of the Pope and sovereign rulers, that give impetus to science and give birth to the new class of merchant nobles creators of wealth with their businesses: this the Renaissance.
Ideas awaken the world; they do it reborn. They are, in short, 'renaissance' ideas. “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world" - so exclaimed Robin Williams, the great interpreter of the movie " Dead Poets Society" (1989).
You’re pitching that shiny new idea to your boss or a client. Maybe you're sure they'll like it, or maybe you know it'll be a hard sell.
And then comes that first hint of an objection: a skeptical or dismissive remark, possibly phrased as a question. You can see the whole plan collapsing.
Take a breath, and then do this.
Image: http://www.fastcompany.com
In the old days, we didn’t have to worry about finance too much. Companies grew more slowly, there was nothing for a CFO to really do for years, and you could sort of outsource everything and just keep an eye on the bank statement.
Things have changed a lot. SaaS accounting and finance has gotten pretty complicated, and the impacts of getting it wrong have gone up substantially.
Image: Image from here: http://theprofitablefirm.com/blog/embrace-boring/
After going through the slightly traumatic process last year of writing a book about the intersection of business and technology,1 I started to think about which books had an impact on me as a business technologist—especially beyond the obvious ones like The Soul of a New Machine and The Mythical Man-Month.2 None of the books that came to mind related to the latest technology trends (social! mobile! machine learning!)—those are important, but they change quickly. The books that really shaped my thinking provided perspectives, often historical, on the organizational, strategic, and human dimensions of business technology. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
Digital health startups have benefited from easy access to capital over the past few years, but the market is about to get a lot tighter.
Analysts and investors watching the space offered a sobering take Wednesday during one of the biggest industry meetings of the year, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, which is largely considered the event that sets the tone for the next 12 months.
Kenneth Clark remembers the last time new investors moved into biotech. They came in the late 1980s.
They left in the early ’90s.
The New is back again in the form of Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and others who are making big bets into the life sciences.
Clark, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who also sat on the board of Pharmacyclics, thinks the new investors are here to stay this time. He’s driven by an increasingly popular belief that new therapies, a maturing biotech sector and new capital will combine to bring returns those new (and traditional) investors need to stay active.
Scholars are deeply gratified when their ideas catch on. And they are even more gratified when their ideas make a difference — improving motivation, innovation, or productivity, for example. But popularity has a price: people sometimes distort ideas, and therefore fail to reap their benefits. This has started to happen with my research on “growth” versus “fixed” mindsets among individuals and within organizations.
Matrix organizations have been around for decades, stimulating vigorous debate between supporters and detractors for nearly as long.1 They remain prevalent at the large number of companies that need to bring functional centers of excellence together with business-specific people and processes. Eighty-four percent of respondents to a recent Gallup survey, for example, were at least slightly matrixed.
Like most people, I look up to and admire the heroes of Silicon Valley (the real ones, not the ones from the TV show). They’ve given rise to services (e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn, Airbnb) that we use every day and make the world a better place. They’ve created value, wealth, and opportunity at unprecedented historic levels.
For most of us, $5 billion might already seem like a fairly huge—and abstract—amount of money. But that number, which happens to be roughly the value of all the Bitcoins in the world today, is a tiny fraction of other markets.
A recent chart from The Money Project attempts to visualize all of the money in the world, from Bitcoin to the mind-bogglingly massive derivatives market, and compares them by size. Each small square on the chart represents $100 billion.
The latest U.S. buyout cycle is beginning to run out of fuel. At just under $606 billion across 3,602 completed deals, U.S. PE deal counts in 2015 slid by over 8%, while total deal value dropped by nearly 5%. Our 2015 Annual U.S. PE Breakdown emphasizes that overall 2015 numbers were strong on a historical basis, but there is strong evidence suggesting the tide is slowly ebbing down.
A few key data points behind our reasoning:
To form your own take, click here to download the full report, which is sponsored by Merrill DataSite and co-sponsored by Murray Devine.
Deloitte has recently released their fifth annual Millennial Survey, detailing the incoming workforce's trends and traits. The research findings are based on a study conducted by Deloitte Global of nearly 7,700 Millennials representing 29 countries around the globe. All respondents were born after 1982, have obtained a college or university degree, are employed full-time, and work in large (100+ employees), private-sector organizations.
It’s no longer a secret that most companies struggle with strategy execution. McKinsey research tells us, for example, that 70 percent of change efforts fall short of desired results. The financial losses implied by statistics like these are massive, and corporate leaders have taken notice. Today’s senior leaders realise that implementation is at least half of the leadership challenge when it comes to improving performance via strategic change. Too frequently, however, they seek solutions in the wrong place.
Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu
